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Social Learning

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Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science
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Definition

In humans, social learning can take many forms. It can occur within academe, outside academe, as group learning and individual learning. We have evolved as social and learning beings.

Introduction

It may be stated that the role of evolution (Darwin 1859) has not been embraced widely by researchers in psychology and social scientists. However, increasingly, a number of contemporary scholars have suggested that the evolutionary process enables a better understanding of human cognition and socialization (e.g., Geary and Berch 2016; Bjorklund and Ellis 2014; Sweller 2008; Wellman 2014). To discuss the numerous ideologies of evolutionary psychology and their associations with social theories is beyond the limits of this chapter, therefore, it will concentrate on two major perspectives. These are from Sweller’s cognitive load theory and Geary’s evolutionary cognition theory. They provide evidence from an evolutionary standpoint of how our memory system and cognitive abilities...

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Correspondence to Wayne Leahy .

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Leahy, W. (2018). Social Learning. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2389-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2389-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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